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Debate: Genetically modified food and the WTO ruling - Let them eat precaution: What the WTO decision on GMOs really means

Anti-science hysteria is dominating the debate about GM foods. That is a shame, argues Jon Entine

Call it “the spin wars”. In a leaked interim report in February, the World Trade Organisation sided with Canada, Argentina, and the US, ruling that the European-wide ban on bio-engineered crops has more to do with protectionism than precaution. But that’s not what you’d believe if you relied on the hysteria-grams flooding the internet.

Greenpeace blasted the WTO as “unqualified to deal with complex scientific and environmental issues”. Friends of the Earth scowled “European safeguards” were being “sacrificed to benefit biotech corporations”. The Consumers Union lambasted the “pre-emptive effort to chill the development of new policies for regulating GM crops”. The WTO, they chorused, is a puppet of nefarious biotechnology corporations aligned with bully nations force-feeding Europe with “Frankenfoods”.

Let’s separate the chaff from the wheat. If this 1,045-page report is upheld, Europe will not have to alter a single regulation or label. Consumers will not be forced to buy and eat food that they do not want. The WTO will demand the EU observe its own regulations – using sound science to evaluate new products. That has not been happening. European countries have been exploiting the controversy to protect their farmers and keep prices high.

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Comments:

GM foods - Anonymous Anonymous, 29 Aug 2007

"But years of demagoguery[]"

versus

"The biggest losers are the children, frozen out of the benefits of the green revolution that many of us take for granted."

Oh noeees! Think of the children!

It seems to me the author isn't shunning demagogics neither, which makes his former statement a bit hypocritical.

Furthermore, it is rife with inaccuracies (not to say untruths). He insinuates that the danger of GM food is only hypothetical, while it is not; there have been cases of real harm done, but this is consistently being played down (ref.: L-Tryptophan Epidemic). Some GM-foods have shown to have unknown new proteins etc. in them (ref.ratexperiments by Monsanto in germany), yet the author claims 'no risk, no gain' and thus we should accept it.

That sounds rather idiotic to me; if there are new compounds in there, and it's meant as food, shouldn't the safety-regulations at least be as severe as a drugs-company that wants to introduce a new medicine? But of course, no GM-corporations wants that neither, do they?

And the further demagogic rethorical question of the author seems rather misplaced too:

"Every activity involves risk. Conventional farmers use chemicals that have unknown long-term consequences. Should we ban conventionally grown foods?"

No, we should ban widespread use of chemicals which have unknown long terms.

It's stupifying to see such an 'argument'. We used DDT for decades, before the companies were forced to admit the danger. Unbelievable damage has been done to nature, whole ecosystems destroyed, animal and human health jeopardised. Had we banned the use of that untill the long term effects were known, we could have spared us all that.

But, instead of learning from past mistakes, the author seems willing to repeat them. And mind you, we're not talking about a chemical product to kill off insects here, which - even with its extreme molecular logelivety - will ultimately be broken down by natural processes...we're talking about *living* organisms, meant as *food*.

How the hell are we ever going to neutralise that, if it turns out to be as deadly in the long run? And what envirronmental/human cost will it take?